That's just how representation works. You can't have the community vote on every single issue; it wouldn't be practical, its much easier to get a group of people together and treat them like a sample group for the population. This is why people elect leaders in real life instead of just having the entire country vote on every single law. This year we will get to select our own representation.

Doesn't have to be every topic....just the ones that are big issues. It takes less than a minute to make the post.

There is a danger of letting forum posts get used as votes; I myself have close to a dozen alts that I use to test different roles, I could have the voice of 10+ people.
Right now there already is a way for people on the forums to influence things, make threads with detailed and logical feedback. Doesn't mean CCP will necessarily do what we ask (they sometimes don't even listen to the CPM), but they read it, and sometimes they really do listen.

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1999870#post1999870

This post bothers me because I feel like the CPMs are only pushing ideas that they agree with instead of what best reflects what the community wants.

The voting system will best represent what the community wants..and coupled with your own vision will determine what's best for the game. A lot of people read and don't post their ideas. A lot of conversations are had outside of the forums. But if there was a voting system, then those guys that don't post will just place their vote and it will better reflect the community's opinion than what these CPMs are telling you.

Ok so in your ideal way of doing things every little idea gets voted on, we waste valuable time voting on stuff and then someone was the bright idea to suggest a Barney suit, 3 people vote because they think its hilarious and the rest ignore it out of hand because they figure someone is trolling a vote just to be stupid and then all of a sudden we have Barney suits because its what the community wants.

This is somewhat ludicrous, and was also seen in many "nerf the AR", "nerf the MD" and "nerf the X item" threads that run rampant around the forums almost every day because someone is using something quite effectively and rather than countering the tactic people just keep on dying to it.

I like that you want everyone's opinion but this is not the way to go about getting it.

Game Design by democracy? You want a large mob of vitriolic FPS players (some very intelligent some not so much) to complain and Campaign for their personal views on what form of fun caters to them personally?

Good luck with that!